I hate times like this

[FantWriter]

One of my hobbies is woodworking, usually building simple toolboxes and small cabinets (nothing furniture grade, no carving or turning, etc.).

One of my undesirable habits is saving cutoffs/scraps. I have eight boxes and bins full of everything from 5mm plywood to 3/16" dowels to 1x12s, most of it under six inches long.

Someday, I'm going to work up the resolve to throw them all out because they're really of no Earthy use and just clutter up the place.

But . . . today . . .

I'm working on a tool cabinet. Because of the type of construction, there are recesses about an inch deep on the sides. I needed to fill them in with something, so I decided to hang some frequently-used tools there. It's too shallow for regular pegboard (and I don't like the look of that), so I made simple frames backed by thin plywood and have been creating trepanned blocks, a peg row, pencil holder, etc. to attach to them.

The frustrating thing is that each and every piece I've used is from my scrap collection. I haven't had to cut into a single piece of new wood.

That might sound like a good thing, but even though I've only used a couple of dozen pieces out of the collection of hundreds, if not thousands, it serves to reinforce my subconscious need to keep everything!

And it's going to make it a lot harder to convince myself that all of it needs to be thrown away.

 

[Iffy]

Major flashback... when stationed in Denver back in da early '70s, I used to scrounge scraps from da bins of a furniture company! Made sum neat stuff over da years with da 'waste'.

I'm wid ya... hang in dere!

 

[Kayte]

lol I run into the same problem fairly often. Just have to watch a few episodes of Hoarders and I can't get rid of it fast enough.

 

[HauntedMyst]

The thing is, if you don't throw it away, you have too much crap. If you do throw it away, you find you need it like 2 weeks later. It's a twisted cycle.

 

[otter1]

Being a wood carver, I feel your pain. I too have scrap wood everywhere. Who knows, I just might need it 'someday'. I also have that horrible 'disease' of wanting every hunk of wood & all the edged tools I see. Good thing I gave up smoking. At least now, my poor wood-chip & sawdust covered dog doesn't have to worry about fire. lol

 

[FantWriter]

The thing is, if you don't throw it away, you have too much crap. If you do throw it away, you find you need it like 2 weeks later. It's a twisted cycle.

A long time ago, my sister gave me a rule -- if you haven't used something in a year, out it goes. So I cleaned house. Within a month, I was buying replacements for what I'd thrown out.

That's simply the story of my life -- if I keep something not immediately useful, the odds of it ever being needed are nearly zero, but the moment I throw something away, I have to have it.

 

[FantWriter]

Being a wood carver, I feel your pain. I too have scrap wood everywhere.

For me, sharp edges need to be behind guards -- I'm missing enough bits and pieces already.

About five years ago, I volunteered to take out a stump (didn't have to pull it, just reduce it far enough to allow some sand and gravel fill). It was black walnut, about four feet in diameter, but with the inner three feet rotted out. I ended up with some beautiful pieces of gnarly wood about a foot square and six to eight inches thick.

It looked great, until I went to saw it into neat blocks. My axe hadn't noticed several layers of ancient barbed wire running though it, but my carbide saw blades sure did. I could have lived with the sparks, but not with replacing the teeth that chipped out.

Sent it all to the landfill and never looked back.

 

[Iffy]

I could have lived with the sparks, but not with replacing the teeth that chipped out.

Yours or da blade?

 

[FantWriter]

Yours or da blade?

The blade. It's to the point anymore that it's cheaper to replace a blade than to replace a carbide tooth, and that's not saying much because they're still pricey.

My only defense of saving scraps is I need a couple of each kind of wood I'm using at the time. For example: when building a box, instead of using 3/4" plywood and rabbeting it, I prefer to use two pieces of 3/8", one smaller than the other, and gluing them together. This saves me the time and trouble of handling heavy stock and doing several set ups. To cut the second, smaller, piece, rather than calculating, measuring, and resetting stops, I put two pieces of scrap in front of the stop (to accommodate the sides).

Since most plywood these days is by "class" rather than actual size, this is a fast and accurate way to get pieces to fit together exactly. (Example: 3/8" Class can measure anywhere from 0.340 to 0.380 (3/8" inch is 0.375), so you'll have gaps or protrusions if you act like it's a real 3/8".)

Why those scraps don't go into the trash when I'm finished is another matter . . .

 

[HauntedMyst]

The thing is, if you don't throw it away, you have too much crap. If you do throw it away, you find you need it like 2 weeks later. It's a twisted cycle.

And almost as if on Que., last week I cleaned out my desk drawer. I had these tiny sleeves of shrink wrap in them. They were sitting there for 10 years. I threw them out. Today I am fixing my Line atomizer and read I can fix it with tiny strips of heat shrink!!!! Argggg!!!

 

[kiefurs]

Please dont stop collecting...You will regret it.
I had an old concrete garage in the garden full of all my saved bits of wood for carving, bowmaking and generally having fun....
I was promised a new workshop and in order to clear every thing to take that garage down, I threw most of my (Junk)away in the skip

Now I have a sterile wooden workshop with nothing to put in it and no inspiration

Needless to say, I've started to 'collect' again!

Keith

 

[FantWriter]

Today I am fixing my Line atomizer and read I can fix it with tiny strips of heat shrink!!!! Argggg!!!

Electronics is another of my failings. I used to think that my hobby was electronics, and I was stripping down old computers, copiers, and anything else I could get my hands on for parts I'd someday need for that hobby. After a few years, I realized my hobby was really cannibalizing old equipment. I sold off the vast majority of my collection in one fell swoop -- a whole pick-up load of everything from stepper motors to transistors to linear power supplies to memory chips . . .

I did keep enough for anything I might actually do (times about 50). Shrink tubing? I have some in my wire-wrap box, some in my automobile electricals box, some in my soldering supplies box, some in my e-cig project box . . .

Fortunately, the collection is now of manageable size -- only one drawer (24x15x12), one shelf, and about a dozen boxes in the basement (anyone need box fans, the guts from a hard disk, or the guts from a CD drive? I have a box of each!).

But on my list of things to build is a decent electronics workbench . . .

 

[FantWriter]

Now I have a sterile wooden workshop with nothing to put in it and no inspiration

One of my pastimes (not exactly a hobby) is drawing floor plans. I recently did one for the ideal (for me) workshop. The software balked a bit towards the end because of the number of items in it, the number of walls, and the overall size (over 12,000 sq. feet). And I've thought of several things I forgot to put in . . .

 

[AttyPops]

Make mulch.

It's like blue jeans. You know about blue jeans, yes? So you pay MONEY for new jeans. You wear them. They get old/shrink/you grow/whatever and then you need to get rid of them. You donate them. The scrap denim gets recycled into making paper MONEY. It's a complete circle of recycling.

Mulch from scrap is like that. It decomposes and feeds trees and such.

Oh, and I like the comment about watching "Hoarders". Good point.

 

[FantWriter]

Making mulch out of wood scraps is a good idea.

Sadly, most of my scraps are plywood, which should never be turned into mulch because of the composition of some glues.